My ex worked at a government contractor and they started paying the guy who wrote grant proposals more than the CEO because without grants they were fucked, and the grant writer was getting wistful for other horizons.
Talking to government is a highly compensated skill set. That’s all lobbyists are.
Bingo, and most engineers have zero clue or respect for this skillset. Even traditional PMs / business dev types don't know what they don't know about how to talk with government or government-adjacent businesses. I've worked for at least 3 companies who had high hopes for building on state/municipal/higher-ed revenue and talked it up in their internal meetings, but when you would ask the CEO/CFO where their government affairs team was, they would look at you like you were speaking Latin. They basically just planned to take their consumer sales motion and apply it to these areas, which fails hilariously almost every time.